268 THE POPULATION 



services. Chivilcoy and the whole region of the 

 chacras of maize and wheat received their caravans 

 for the harvest, and some were kept for the sowing. 

 Even the ranchers took advantage of this reinforce- 

 ment, and hired the men for marking. In the 

 autumn they went back with their tropillas, much 

 dreaded by the breeders whose land they crossed, 

 stealing any horses that were not well guarded. 



The province of Santa Fe, especially in the agri- 

 cultural departments of the north-west, is now the 

 chief theatre in the Pampean region for the immi- 

 gration of the Santiaguefios, It does not always 

 come by rail, but has to some extent preserved its 

 primitive and picturesque features. The immigrants 

 arrive in troops on mules and horses, and scatter in 

 November over the colonies. 



The population of Argentina has also felt the 

 attraction of the urban centres. The growth of the 

 towns is due to both foreign and national immigration. 

 The development of urban life, which is one of the 

 characteristic features of modern Argentina, is a 

 recent phenomenon. There was no indication of its 

 coming in the eighteenth century. D'Azara was, on 

 the contrary, struck by the absence of communal 

 life {p^iehlos tmidos). The scattering of the population 

 was a result of the predominance of breeding. " If 

 these people found profit in agriculture, one would 

 see them gather together in villages, instead of the 

 whole population being dispersed in ranches." ^ It 

 is this scattering of the population rather than an 

 absolute numerical inferiority — the solitude, " the 

 desert, the universal horizon that forced itself into 

 the very entrails of the land " ^ — that moulded the 

 fiery soul of the gaucho. 



The primitive urban sites were all either on the 



• F. de Azara, Memorias sobre el estado rural del rio de la Plata en 

 1801, p. 10. 



' Sarmiento, El Facundo, p. 19. 



